and fall of the Primrose family is a classic, satirical depiction of domestic life in the 1700s. The hugely successful "The Vicar of Wakefield" from 1766 became one of the most popular novels of Victorian England, with direct references to it in the work of Austen, Dickens, Shelley, Eliot, Brontë, Goethe, Schopenhauer and many others. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He is most famous for his novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766).